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Saturday, November 3, 2012

04: In South Africa

View Larger Map I was astonished at the thousands of natives dressed in castoff clothing and even gunny sacks. They heaved the coal and did the dock work. Ashore there were gaudily dressed native rickshaw boys, some with great horns on headdresses. The latter were for posing for photographs.

I stayed overnight and tracted the next morning, working with Elder Rex C. Ellsworth, from Safford, Arizona, who later owned the racehorse "Swaps" which won a big prize. Elder Evan P. Wright, then back in Utah, sent Rex a wire offering him a get rich quick scheme selling brassieres to the natives of South Africa.

Durban has a beautiful beach, natural harbor and beautiful green hills, called the Berea area, above the flatlands. It also had a big native market where you could buy bananas for less than 12 cents a dozen, and a large East Indian section. Mahatma Ghandi was born in Durban.

There were electric two-decker tramways. Once when I later labored in Durban, Elder A. Kay Berry and I rode the tram and inadvertently left our two tennis rackets in the car. They were held by the tram company until we picked them up. Youngsters in South Africa received very British education and were honest. No European would smoke a pipe, because the natives smoked pipes.

I next went by the same ship around Cape of Good Hope to Capetown, mission headquarters. President Don Mack Dalton (he was a lawyer with a wife and two sons they adopted) had me labor at mission headquarters several months. I was commissarion and news editor of Cumorah’s Southern Cross. I rewrote the news letters sent in by each district and wrote other copy for the monthly.

President Dalton was strong on selling Books of Mormon. One Elder, Wells L. Evans, from Bountiful, was a high power salesman for first contact, but not much good on follow-ups. He made lecture tours of the mission showing lantern slides and lecturing on Book of Mormon archaeology. He used S.O.A. after his named (student of archaeology). Once he sold Books of Mormon at 50 cents a piece to about 15 nuns following his lecture at a convent. They did not know the title of the book they were burying. I mailed the books to the convent from Mowbray. Elder Evans later married in South Africa dn did not win an honorable release.

I made a three week trip by bicycle without purse or script with Elder Kenneth Sutherland, a little Scotsman who had qualified as an engraver in Aberdeen, and come to Capetown, to Robertson.

Our first night about 20 miles outside Capetown, we spent with a man and his East Indian wife, who was very hospitable.

The next night was at Wellington, a beautiful town in a rich fruit growing area along the Berg River. It was not far from Paarl (Pearl) named from a huge granite hill around which the hane poot grapes grew in great profusion. We did not have a bit of luck finding anyone who would let us stay with them overnight until about 11:15 p.m. when a hospitable woman with a native servant invited us to sleep on cots on her front porch. We were delighted.